Recording Vocals

[Mondy]

Hi there,

I'm using Cool Edit Por and mic-ing my amp in order to record. Well, I was farting around last night, and I was recording a cover tune. Not a Van Halen one, so don't get too excited. [img]images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif[/img]

Anyway, I'd recorded 6 tracks last night, 2 with my Wolfgang, left and right channels, 2 with my Ibanez, left and right channel, 1 with the Wolfgang as a sort of atmospheric fill, and the final 1, again with my Wolfgang as the main guitar riff.

Quite pleased with how this was working out, I decided to record the vocals. Just to see if I had got the song structure right. I was just going to use the same crappy P.C. mic I have. So I play the stuff I've recorded through the speakers, and I sing through the microphone.

Found two problems with this

1. Microphone kept picking up my breathing. Really annoying
2. It also picked up what I'd already recorded, which added a really annoying delay effect to everything

Any ideas on how to eliminate these two. I'm guessing that if I just use headphones to play the stuff back and stand back from the microphone, then I will eliminate these two factors, but wondering if you guys have any words of wisdom...

?

[img]images/smilies/headscratch.gif[/img]

Thanx in advance...

[img]images/smilies/icon_thumb.gif[/img]

[ericgtr]

First thing anyone here will probably say is to get a real mic, I am not a singer (well I can but I sound like a dog stuck in a barb wire fence) so I don't worry about it much. I have done some recording of voice overs and stuff though and I ran into the same problems you have. First thing I did was turn the background that you are voicing over way down so you can just hear it. Then when singing into it try it through a piece of paper, it will really help eliminate pops and breath sounds.

[Mondy]

Okay, cheers for this dude.

I'm not gonna get a proper mic yet, because I can't justify spending any money yet. I just need to be able to produce a half decent recording with what I already have. Really, I just want to ensure that I have got the tempo and song structure right when I am recording the vocals, so that I know that everything is in order.

But when I played it back the other night, what with the delay effect and the breathing, it was unbearable to hear (no snide jokes about that just being down to my bad vocals [img]images/smilies/icon_lol.gif[/img]). I quickly determined that the tempo was wrong, so I had to scrub all the guitar tracks anyway, but man, it was so annoying hearing me breath and everything.

Sounded like I had recorded the bloody thing on the moors !!! [img]images/smilies/icon_rant.gif[/img] :handsoverears:

[siN]

Mondola,

1. Delay prevention
Use a headphone for hearing the music and to hear you sing (your singing while recording must also get to you by that headphone). If you don't hear your singing good enough, maybe it is possible that you invert the phase of your singing (amplitude inversion).

2. Breathing
In a studio you cut out all unwanted noise (for example the low noise of your guitar, when you are not playing, but still records this noise). Or if you play guitar, bass and drumms in one take, most of the times the drumms will catch some guitar noise while waiting to come in. Clean up all beginnings of each track, till the instrument comes in.
This can you also do with your breathing. Cut all your breathings out.

3. Labial words
As Eric suggested, you a "labial prevention thing" (don't know the word) to prevent labial sounds come PLOP in very loud. (Labials are B, P and more characters).

Have some fun!

[Mondy]

Hi siN,

Thanks for the advice. However, I don't know if I have the equipment/software/technical know-how/understanding to do everything properly like you suggest.

I don't know how to edit certain types of noise out of my mp3's. Can I do this using Cool Edit Pro ? Or do I need that other one that everyone talks about ? Was it Cool Edit 2000 or something like that ?

Anyway, I will try to see what I can do. If I am happy with it, or if I manage to progress it this far, than I may post it. If not, I won't bother, because it sounds so bad...

But thanx for the help !

[img]images/smilies/icon_thumb.gif[/img]

[ericgtr]

What I would do is just experiment a little bit, try different things like maybe a sock over the mic or head phones like sin suggested, maybe with on ear off so you can hear yourself. I would recommend staying with cool edit pro because it's more geared for what you are doing. Worse thing that can happen is you delete the block and try something different [img]images/smilies/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[siN]

[ QUOTE ]
mondola said:
I don't know how to edit certain types of noise out of my mp3's.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mondola, I don't know how Cool Edit works or looks like, but I can imagine that you see a graphical presentation of what you recorded on one track.

For example:
If a track looks like this.

....noise..placing your hand on the fretboard..noise..open your volume..noise...|guitar playing starts here and goes on

I can suggest that you use a scissor (Edward Scissorhands? LOL) and cut that take in two. The unwanted noise part and the wanted noise (your guitar (LOL)) part.
Let the wanted noise there and just cut the unwanted noise part away.


So if your voice track sounds like this:
sing sing.... breath.... sing sing

Just cut out the breath so the remaining will be:
sing sing.... .......... sing sing

[CanyonCarver]

Good suggestionabout cutting noise off, sIN.
I haven't seen Cool Edit, but I know it's childplay to do it in ProTools. I'm sure you can hit the instruction manual and get to it in no time, Mondola!
Keep it up, bro!

[siN]

Cutting noise: The person where we recorded our latest two studio CDs cleaned up all tracks, before he starts to mix, so no unwanted noise was on the tracks.

A few months ago I listened to a recording from way back in '92 and then some unwanted noise was irritating me. I haven't head that noise then when we were mixing.
It was the snare-drumm noising while the intro-guitar picked some clean notes.....

[GoldenEars]

Originally Posted by siN

Mondola,

1. Delay prevention
Use a headphone for hearing the music and to hear you sing (your singing while recording must also get to you by that headphone). If you don't hear your singing good enough, maybe it is possible that you invert the phase of your singing (amplitude inversion).

2. Breathing
In a studio you cut out all unwanted noise (for example the low noise of your guitar, when you are not playing, but still records this noise). Or if you play guitar, bass and drumms in one take, most of the times the drumms will catch some guitar noise while waiting to come in. Clean up all beginnings of each track, till the instrument comes in.
This can you also do with your breathing. Cut all your breathings out.

3. Labial words
As Eric suggested, you a "labial prevention thing" (don't know the word) to prevent labial sounds come PLOP in very loud. (Labials are B, P and more characters).

Have some fun!

Your on the right track but you seldom want to cut out something like breathing all together or the vocal will sound choppy or not natural no matter how accurate your edits are. Instead a good solution is to use what is called a downwards expander. This device is set up with controls very much like a compresser but functions more like a gate except that it is not for right off and right back on like a gate unless u use it to the max ... it only attenuates. You can set it up so that when the audio drops below a certain level the downwards expander will bring it down even farther. You can control all of these aspects...(at what level it starts to kick in, then how much it will attenutate the signal and how fast it will do this then how long it will take to release this attenuation when the vocal or what ever audio u are using it for kicks back in) and when used correctly it has a very natural sound to it very much like a compresser sounds natural when used correctly. I personally own stand alone hardware expanders as well as the ones in my Console but I am sure for you hobbiests there must be a plug in that would work well for you.
When u mentioned guitars bleeding through during a stop in a song u were very correct about the effectiveness and the importance of editing this stuff out but when it comes to vocals be ware that unless you have the practise and the tricks your vocal will sound very edited. I do this stuff for a living and only when I have a high end client do I put myself through the punishment of editing out every last breath while still maintaining a natural sound. For the gentlemen that started the post your noise problem is probably caused by the quality of your pre amp and mic alot more than your breathing. And if you are using compression incorrectly you will only make the problem much worse. Keep it simple and by a sure sm 57 and a 100 console.
If you monitor both your PC tracks and your vocals from the console you can set your latency on your sound card as high as you like and you will experience no delay what so ever. ( you could literally set it for 10 minutes if the card would do that and there would be no delay except that you would have to wait 10 minutes for every punch in to start etc. lol
I could go on and on about this stuff but i will leave both the gentlemen I quoted and the gentlemen who started the post with what I have said and one more important tid bit of info. Once you have a decent mic and preamp and we are only talking a few hundred dollar investment and a pair of headphones....you generally want to sing as close as you can to the mic because proximity effect kicks in and the closer u get to a transducer ( mic, pickup, speaker etc) you gain bottom and top end expodentially. That works out to a fat vocal . Oh one more thing about what the gentlemen said about reversing phaze. The concept is not to reverse the phaze after you track vocals but rather before you track vocals. (this technique applies to tracking vocals with studio monitors on quietly during the recording of a vocal without headphones). So what alot of engineers do in these circumstances is to reverse the phaze of the speakers not the mic itself while tracking then put it back to normal for the mix and by doing this they are hoping to eliminate the music blead through the USE of phaze cancellation. That tecnique is for the more advanced and is far more complicated than the watered down explanations that you will find on the net or in books or from the way I have just expained it. Perhaps sometime I will do a post on that subject and take the time and the pages to really explain that one if anyone is interested? Thanks and I hope I have helped you guys, Ron
Horton, Golden Ears